The Bibliography and First-Line Index of
English Verse, 1559-1603 is a computerized
first-line index of the poetry printed or transcribed
in manuscripts during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
In addition to listing the first lines
alphabetically, the Index provides thoroughly
cross-indexed information about each entry. This data
is cross-referenced by technical forms, authors,
titles, subscriptions, refrains, genres, and subject
matter, with later editions and published scholarship
cited for each text as relevant.

The Elizabethan Index complements William A.
Ringler's Bibliography and First-Line Index of
English Verse Printed 1476-1558, and its
companion volume of English Verse in
Manuscript, 1501-1558, prepared by Michael
Rudick and Susan J. Ringler. Mansell Press will
publish the final instalment of the Index in
hardcover uniform with these first two volumes in the
series. Unlike them, however, the Elizabethan Index
is computerized and may also be published in CD-ROM
or on-line.

Professor Ringler originally designed the Tudor verse
indexing project to help editors locate texts;
however, the range of information provided for each
poem extends the usefulness of the Index to
disciplines beyond English literature. Our ancestors
used verse to record anything they thought worth
remembering. The subject index records poems on such
topics as the plague and surgery, priests and monks,
the New World, cooking and recipes, alchemy, Robin
Hood, the Earl of Essex, marriage, women, monopolies,
and kingship. Historians, historians of art, music,
and medicine, and scholars in many other fields will
find a wealth of research data readily available in
the Index.

Work on the Index continues under auspices of a
three-year grant from the Research Division of the
National Endowment for the Humanities. Presently,
over 18,000 poems from a bibliography of some 1200
books and manuscripts are entered on the data base.
The Elizabethan age will undoubtedly yield more
extant verse, both by line count and number of
individual poems, than has survived for all the
preceding centuries of English poetry combined. The
Index provides flexibility of control over this vast
cultural resource: it will supply researchers with
quick access to basic data for books, articles,
dissertations, and term papers for generations to
come.

The Index is currently housed at Georgetown College,
Georgetown, KY, 40324, under the direction of Steven
W. May, Professor of English.